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CUMBERLAND & WESTMORLAND,

Ancient and Modern :

THE PEOPLE, DIALECT, SUPERSTITIONS AND
CUSTOMS.

BY J. SULLIVAN.

"DENN WIE DER ZEITEN GRAUS ES MAG BEDECKEN,
KANN, WAS DER MENSCH GEDACHT, MENSCH WIEDER WECKEN."

LONDON:

WHITTAKER AND CO.

KENDAL:

JOHN HUDSON, JOS. DAWSON, AND JAS. ROBINSON.

1857.

BIBLIOTHECA

REGIA

MONACENSIS.

TO JOHN NICHOLSON, ESQ., PH. D.,

THIS LITTLE VOLUME

A TRIBUTE OF ESTEEM FOR HIS LOVE OF LANGUAGES AND OF

ADMIRATION FOR HIS HIGH LINGUISTIC ATTAINMENTS

IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED

BY

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

THE following chapters are, with some diffidence, offered as a slender contribution to an interesting branch of science. They originated about three years ago in a series of papers furnished to the Kendal Mercury, and designed, however imperfectly, to make a commencement of a critical examination of the dialect. Of these papers a limited number of copies were printed, to supply persons desirous of preserving the essay. As a sequel to the first series, there followed a second on the superstitions; but, instead of reprinting this as the former, it was thought better to re-write and reprint the whole.

In the production of his first essay, the author conceived he was called upon to bring into alto-relief the parts of his subject hitherto neglected or slighted, namely, Celtic and Norse. But since then, local archæology has been looking up, the ethnography of the district, with Norse in the ascendant, has been several times before the public in the form of lectures; and the Norse element especially has been treated in an elaborate work, the "Northmen in Cumberland and Westmorland," by Mr. R. Ferguson. Thus, though, in the author's opinion, much of the matter that made its appearance might be regarded as self-explosive, yet when Norse became the Diggings for Cumbrian etymologists, it ceased to need any special fostering from him; and this must account for what

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